Hair metal
Hair metal is a type of heavy metal music that arose in the mid/late 1970s in the United States and was a strong force in popular music throughout most of the 1980s. Pejorative terms for such music include poodle rock, due to the long, teased, bushy hair of many performers, or cock rock, due to frequent fixation on sexual content.Despite its wide popularity, many people considered Hair Metal humorous or unimportant due to the perception that most hair metal bands seemed more focused on flashy make-up, clothing, lyrics and stage shows then their music, often considerd a watered down a combination of metal and glam rock, anthemicic pop-metal mixed with the occasional power ballad, inspired by bands of the 1970s like Kansas, Boston, and Foreigner.
By the early 1990s, hair metal bands were increasingly formulaic one-hit wonders. In 1991, the massive popularity of alternative rock by Alice In Chains, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam led to a decline in Hair Metal's popularity.
A few Hair Metal bands, perhaps most notably Bon Jovi, have managed to stay commercially viable throught the 1990s.
In recent years, certain bands associated (perhaps loosely) with punk rock have scored hits with tracks that seem to evoke the anthemic hair-metal sound, such as the Offspring's Gone Away (1997) and AFI's Girl's Not Grey (2003). It is hard to say whether these tracks are intended as sincere homage or as an ironic reference. The Darkness has attempted to revive the hair metal style.
List of hair metal bands
| Heavy metal | Genres |
|---|
| Alternative - Australian war - Black - Christian - Circus metal - Death - Doom - Epic - Hair metal - Goth - Metalcore - Neo-Classical metal - NWOBHM - Power - Oriental - Stoner - Sludge - Thrash - True metal |
| Grindcore - Industrial metal - Nu metal - Progressive metal |
| Other topics |
| Fashion - Umlaut |